If being a mother is the toughest job in the world I’ve been asking myself lately are there then KPIs in this role? And when is my performance review? My type A personality craves clear cut results but in parenting that feels like I’m chasing a rainbow.
It can be easy to point to the tangibles and pat yourself on the back. They’ve got pretty good table manners, they are gentle with their friends, they’re (mostly) toilet trained and are getting good at swimming. So what to say about all that bad behaviour then? The extreme tantrums, the shouting, the relentless sibling infighting – is that on my back too?
‘Your children are only ever leant to you’ my mum often repeats to me. It’s a phrase I have had a hard time digesting in these early years with my youngest still following me to the bathroom but I am starting to understand the bigger picture of what she’s saying. It’s that my children are separate humans to my husband and me and we will not endure this long parenting journey if we simply rise and fall on their triumphs.
Without vapid indicators to cling to then, how will any of us ever know we are doing a good job?
A podcast interview I heard with writer David Sedaris pierced my perspective. “When we were kids we’d have dinner together and my father would leave, go downstairs the second he could and the rest of us would sit around the table with my mother for hours and hours, 10:30pm on a school night and we’re still with our mother around the table,” he said. “I think she really liked having a lot of kids and she liked us, and we liked her.”
Successful parenting is being unyielding in showing our children we genuinely like them without ever caring if they like us back.
